


Polishing the Table

by belantana



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt-fic for lost_spook's housework meme. Set sometime between series 9 and 10 (spoilers).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polishing the Table

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/79027.html).

After she's fired, Beth comes home once a week, sometime between midnight and three a.m. At first Ruth lies in bed and listens, thinking each time is the last.

The third time she gets up and follows the sounds to the kitchen. Beth is trying to move stealthily but is clearly in a hurry, catching her hip on the table in the dark and swearing under her breath.

"You could turn the light on, you know. I don't mind."

"Then you'd see me."

"I already heard you," Ruth points out.

"Well done. Do you really want to see me too?"

"No," Ruth admits, thinking about the capacious legal difference between a vague noise in the kitchen at night and an actual sighting of your ex-flatmate with whom you have been verboten to fraternise.

"Fuck," Beth says.

Ruth's eyes have yet to adjust fully to the light; her heart still in her throat. "What are you doing?"

"Making a fucking sponge cake."

There's a dark stain across the kitchen table. Beth is rubbing at it ineffectually with a teatowel. Ruth blinks. "Is that – ?"

" _Don't_ turn on the light." Ruth pauses with her finger on the switch, and draws her hand back. "It's not mine. I just put my kit down on the table and didn't realise how much had got on there. _Shit_. This is going to stain the wood. You'll have to paint it."

For a moment, Ruth feels a sort of indignant horror that Beth has brought this – whatever _this_ is – into her house – but it fades quickly. The sanctity of her house was violated a long time ago. "I thought you'd gone to Colombia," she says instead.

"After what I gave up in Westhouse? No thank you."

"Well, I thought you'd leave the country, at least."

"Not yet. Working on it. A girl needs cash before she can travel."

"Don't you have cash?"

"We had the same salary. Do you?"

No we didn't, Ruth thinks but doesn't say. Blood and midnight excursions. "Six?" she guesses.

Beth snorts. "I'm not that desperate. I'm freelancing. With an old friend of yours, actually."

"Really? Who?" Ruth asks before she can stop herself.

Beth pauses in her scrubbing to heave a sigh. Ruth can almost see the sardonically raised eyebrow through the gloom. "Seriously?"

Ruth pulls herself up before she snaps in irritation. Never engage in bickering with someone who to all appearances has just committed an execution of dubious legality. She reminds herself again that Beth never met Ros; something to be grateful for, she supposes. Right. It's two in the morning, Beth isn't getting anywhere with the teatowel and the conversation is veering from surreal to ridiculous.

"Bicarb soda," she says firmly. "Vinegar."

"Paint," Beth mutters. "Baby-shit yellow, I should think. It'll go with those hideous curtains."

Feeling like a child with her bare feet on the tiles, Ruth finds her way to the pantry and kneels to search the bottom shelf. "I can't read the labels in the dark. This is silly. Can't I turn the light on?"

"Not if you want to keep your job."

"I think this is vinegar." She brings a bottle to the table and unscrews the lid. "Smells like vinegar."

"So does Harry," Beth says with vehemence. There is a pause, then suddenly they're collapsed into each other and giggling like schoolgirls.


End file.
